This ambitious and well-researched study brings together for the first time translations of the ancient literature concerning the Sumerian god Enki, one of four gods and goddesses who comprised the highest level of the Sumerian pantheon. The very existence of these writings, which date from the Third Millennium B.C., was unknown until about 100 years ago, when their cuneiform script was deciphered. Since then, it has become apparent that Sumerian literature had a profound and enduring influence on both Biblical and classical Greek literature, and so on the literature of the western world as a whole. Kramer, one of the world's leading sumerologists, has prepared these translations from among the scores of works he has published over the last fifty years; John Maier provides a full interpretive framework that places the translations in their broader comparative cultural context. This rare collection will be of interest to students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines from Near Eastern and Biblical Studies to Mythology and Comparative Literature.

The Sumerians were a non-Semitic, non-Indo-European people who flourished in southern Babylonia from the beginning of the fourth to the end of the third millennium B. C. During this long stretch of time the Sumerians, whose racial and linguistic affiliations are still unclassifiable, represented the dominant cultural group of the entire Near East. This cultural dominance manifested itself in three directions: 1. It was the Sumerians who developed and probably invented the cuneiform system of writing which was adopted by nearly all the peoples of the Near East and without which the cultural progress of western Asia would have been largely impossible. 2. The Sumerians developed religious and spiritual concepts together with a remarkably well integrated pantheon which influenced profoundly all the peoples of the Near East, including the Hebrews and the Greeks. Moreover, by way of Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, not a few of these spiritual and religious concepts have permeated the modern civilized world. 3. The Sumerians produced a vast and highly developed literature, largely poetic in character, consisting of epics and myths, hymns and lamentations, proverbs and "words of wisdom." These compositions are inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets which date largely from approximately 1750 B. C. a In the course of the past hundred years, approximately five b thousand such literary pieces have been excavated in the mounds of ancient Sumer. Of this number, over two thousand, more than two-thirds of our source material, were excavated by the University of Pennsylvania in the mound covering ancient Nippur in the course of four grueling campaigns lasting from 1889 to 1900; these Nippur tablets and fragments represent, therefore, the major source for the reconstruction of the Sumerian compositions. As literary products, these Sumerian compositions rank high among the creations of civilized man. They compare not unfavorably with the ancient Greek and Hebrew masterpieces, and like them mirror the spiritual and intellectual life of an otherwise little known civilization. Their significance for a proper appraisal of the cultural and spiritual development of the Near East can hardly be overestimated. The Assyrians and Babylonians took them over almost in toto. The Hittites translated them into their own language and no doubt imitated them widely. The form and contents of the Hebrew literary creations and to a certain extent even those of the ancient Greeks were profoundly influenced by them. As practically the oldest written literature of any significant amount ever uncovered, it furnishes new, rich, and unexpected source material to the archaeologist and anthropologist, to the ethnologist and student of folklore, to the students of the history of religion and of the history of literature.

This study analyzes the divine concept of the Sumero-Akkadian deity Enki in its literary and mythological development through different periods of Mesopotamian history. Sumerian myths and theology related to the god Enki are influential throughout the history of the Ancient Near East. Several mythological motives from the Sumerian cultural area later reach the creation stories of the Old Testament and beyond. Through the Biblical narratives the ancient Sumerian mythology of Enki reaches the later Christian world, and therefore this mythology has become a part of the collective memory and culture of the present day world. Seven chapters give a diachronical overview of the relevant source materials (royal inscriptions, hymns, etc.) related to the god Enki and other close divine figures and religious phenomena from the period of about 2500-1700 BC. The last two chapters concentrate on the aspects of comparative mythology and archaic Sumerian religion. The relations of Enki and the Mother Goddess in the Mesopotamian religion and YHWH and Eve in the Old Testament are briefly analyzed. Some aspects about the decline of the cult of the Mother Goddess and several details of the political history of the Ancient Near East reflected in the relevant texts are discussed in the book. It is claimed that there is no direct conflict between the theologies of Nippur and Eridu (Enlil and Enki), at least when analyzing the available source material.

The Mesopotamian influence on Greek mythology in literary works of the epic period is considerable - yet it is a largely unexplored field. In this book Charles Penglase investigates major Mesopotamian and Greek myths. His examination concentrates on journey myths. A major breakthrough is achieved in the recognition of the extent of Mesopotamian influence and in the understanding of the colourful myths involved. The results are of significant interest, especially to scholars and students of ancient Greek and Near Eastern religion and mythology.

This volume centres on one of the most important questions in the study of antiquity – the interaction between Greece and the Ancient Near East, from the Mycenaean to the Hellenistic periods. Focusing on the stories that the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean told about the gods and their relationships with humankind, the individual treatments draw together specialists from both fields, creating for the first time a truly interdisciplinary synthesis. Old cases are re-examined, new examples discussed, and the whole range of scholarly opinions, past and present, are analysed, critiqued, and contextualised. While direct textual comparisons still have something to show us, the methodologies advanced here turn their attention to deeper structures and wider dynamics of interaction and influence that respect the cultural autonomy and integrity of all the ancient participants.

The evolution of the Gilgamesh epic" (1982) / Jeffrey H. Tigay -- From "Gilgamesh in literature and art: the second and first millennia" (1987) / Wilfred G. Lambert -- From "Gilgamesh: sex, love and the ascent of knowledge" (1987) / Benjamin Foster -- "Images of women in the Gilgamesh epic" (1990) / Rivkah Harris -- "The marginalization of the goddesses" (1992) / Tikva Frymer-Kensky -- "Mourning the death of a friend: some assyriological notes" (1993) / Tzvi Abusch -- "Liminality, altered states, and the Gilgamesh epic" (1996) / Sara Mandell -- "Origins: new light on eschatology in Gilgamesh's mortuary journey" (1996) / Raymond J. Clark -- From "a Babylonian in Batavia: Mesopotamian literature and lore in The sunlight dialogues" (1982) / Greg Morris -- "Charles Olson and the poetic uses of Mesopotamian scholarship" / John Maier -- From "'Or also a godly singer, ' Akkadian and early Greek literature" (1984) / Walter Burkert -- From "Gilgamesh and Genesis" (1987) / David Damrosch -- "Praise for death" (1990) / Donald Hall -- From "Gilgamesh in the Arabian nights" (1991) / Stephanie Dalley -- "Ovid's Blanda voluptas and the humanization of Enkidu" (1991) / William L. Moran -- From "the Yahwist's primeval myth" (1992) / Bernard F. Batto -- "Gilgamesh and Philip Roth's Gil Gamesh" (1996) / Marianthe Colakis -- From "The epic of Gilgamesh" (1982) / J. Tracy Luke and Paul W. Pruyser -- From "Gilgamesh and the Sundance Kid: the myth of male friendship" (1987) / Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow -- "Gilgamesh and other epics" (1990) / Albert B. Lord -- From "Reaching for abroad: departures" (1991) / Eric J. Leed -- From "Introduction" to he who saw everything (1991) / Robert Temple -- "The oral aesthetic and the bicameral mind" (1991) / Carl Lindahl -- From "Point of view in anthropological discourse: the ethnographer as Gilgamesh" (1991) / Miles Richardson -- From "The wild man: the epic of Gilgamesh" (1992) / Thomas Van Nortwick.